Edit Plugin

The edit plugin lets you modify music metadata using your favorite text editor.

Enable the edit plugin in your configuration (see Using Plugins) and then type:

beet edit QUERY

Your text editor (i.e., the command in your $EDITOR environment variable) will open with a list of tracks to edit. Make your changes and exit your text editor to apply them to your music.

Command-Line Options

The edit command has these command-line options:

  • -a or --album: Edit albums instead of individual items.

  • -f FIELD or --field FIELD: Specify an additional field to edit (in addition to the defaults set in the configuration).

  • --all: Edit all available fields.

Interactive Usage

The edit plugin can also be invoked during an import session. If enabled, it adds two new options to the user prompt:

[A]pply, More candidates, Skip, Use as-is, as Tracks, Group albums, Enter search, enter Id, aBort, eDit, edit Candidates?

  • eDit: use this option for using the original items’ metadata as the starting point for your edits.

  • edit Candidates: use this option for using a candidate’s metadata as the starting point for your edits.

Please note that currently the interactive usage of the plugin will only allow you to change the item-level fields. In case you need to edit the album-level fields, the recommended approach is to invoke the plugin via the command line in album mode (beet edit -a QUERY) after the import.

Also, please be aware that the edit Candidates choice can only be used with the matches found during the initial search (and currently not supporting the candidates found via the Enter search or enter Id choices). You might find the --search-id SEARCH_ID import option useful for those cases where you already have a specific candidate ID that you want to edit.

Configuration

To configure the plugin, make an edit: section in your configuration file. The available options are:

  • itemfields: A space-separated list of item fields to include in the editor by default. Default: track title artist album

  • albumfields: The same when editing albums (with the -a option). Default: album albumartist